BURLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS (07/13/2000) - Genuity Corp. is jazzing up its dedicated Internet access service-level agreements this week.
Formerly known as GTE Internetworking, the ISP is offering business customers stronger guarantees in the areas of network availability, latency and packet loss.
"The enhancements offer our customers a comprehensive performance standard," says Susan Hartman, senior product manager for Internet Advantage, Genuity's dedicated Internet access services.
Genuity has been offering customers a network availability guarantee, but the SLA did not include the local-loop portion of a user's connection to the Internet. Now Genuity is guaranteeing availability on Internet Advantage customers' local-loop connections, but only if that link was ordered through Genuity.
If Genuity's network or a customer's local-loop connection is unavailable for 10 minutes or more in any given instance, the ISP will refund the customer a one-day service credit. If the networks are unavailable for 60 minutes or more, Genuity will refund a three-day service credit. This SLA also applies to Genuity's international customers.
Genuity is also reinforcing its round-trip latency guarantee. The ISP is guaranteeing that customer's traffic will traverse Genuity's network in 65 msec or less. Genuity's previous SLA guaranteed 75 msec or less. Earlier this year, Cable & Wireless Communications PLC was one of the first ISPs to offer a round-trip minimum latency guarantee of 70 msec or less, but now Genuity upped the ante with its new SLA.
Genuity's guarantee is also available to European customers, but only for traffic that travels between its 10 points of presence in Europe. For traffic that travels between the U.S. and Europe, Genuity is guaranteeing a 110-msec or better round-trip guarantee.
The ISP has also beefed up its packet loss SLA. Genuity was guaranteeing it would not drop more than 10% of packets on average, per month, but now has improved the guarantee to not drop more than 1%. This guarantee also applies to Genuity's international customers.
If Genuity doesn't live up to its latency or packet-loss SLAs, the ISP will refund customers a one-day service credit.
But the compensation for Genuity's SLAs are reactive, meaning a customer must notice and report the failure to receive the credit.
Genuity's Hartman says the ISP is moving to a more proactive model, but such a system is not yet available.
Genuity: www.genuity.com